Contents

The people who lived in the Dust Bowl area were mostly farmers. Many years of intense farming without rain left the soil dry.[3][4] When strong winds blew, they covered cities, towns, and farms in dried, dusty soil, ruining the farmland.[3]

One famous storm on April 14, 1935, called Black Sunday, was so bad it covered dozens of cities in black clouds of dust and made it impossible to see the sky or even a few feet ahead.[4]Writer Timothy Egan says that the Black Sunday storm "carried away twice as much dirt as was dug out of the earth to create the Panama Canal."[5]

The Dust Bowl period is still considered one of the worst environmental disasters in United States history.[5][3][6] Many thousands of people died from breathing in the dust, or from starvation.[7] Many others who survived lost everything they had, and left the Dust Bowl to look for work in other parts of the country. These people were called "Dust Bowl refugees."[7]